As part of the repositioning of the KDE brand we want to give authors of third party applications a phrase to describe their relationship with the KDE community. Some authors may wish to associate themselves with the KDE community, others simply to acknowledge that their application is built on the KDE Platform or uses KDE technology so it is likely that we will recommend a choice of phrases to be used to meet these differing needs.

Please vote and help us choose. If you have a idea for an alternative phrase, please feel free to suggest it in the comments below. We'll probably choose a few of the most popular phrases based on the poll but will also look through the comments and, if we see an idea we particularly like, may use that too.

We would also love to hear from volunteers willing to help produce artwork and banners to accompany the chosen phrases.

As someone mentioned on the poll, with the rebranding a couple of the options don't make much sense...

* By the KDE Community

As KDE now means 'the community' this is redundant. Perhaps 'By KDE' but that's a little short.

* Powered by KDE

This one effectively means 'Powered by KDE (the community)' which is nice if interpreted like that - but I suspect it isn't going to help the rebranding because of the immediate interpretation: 'Powered by KDE (the platform)'. Perhaps 'Powered by the KDE platform' would cover that, but it's getting wordy now. "Built on the KDE Platform"?

My immediate reaction was Powered by KDE was by far the snappiest phrase but that it weakened the KDE is a community message of the re-branding so, somewhat reluctantly, voted for Free Software from KDE.

If you Google "Powered by Mozilla" you will find a whole page of FAQs covering very similar ground. Mozilla clearly sees itself as a community but wanted a means for third parties to acknowledge their use of Mozilla technologies e.g. Gecko. They also wanted Mozilla to have a clear identity apart from Firefox (echoes of KDE and the Plasma Desktop).

It would seem they are prepared to somewhat overload the meaning of Mozilla to encompass both the community and its technologies. So I think if KDE marketing took a similar approach in explaining a "Powered by KDE" logo then it could work very well.

I'm thinking this post just confuses the issues more; as KDE is the group of people making the software then what does it mean to write software that uses the KDE platform? Well, you become part of the KDE community.

In my ideal world, I'd agree - anyone who makes free software on the KDE Platform should be able to consider themselves a part of KDE.

However, I don't think everyone would, at least not immediately. Imagine I know nothing about KDE, but I come across the Platform and realise it is good and so use it to make an app that I release on my website. Then I find it's on KDE-apps (because someone uploaded it) and it is described as KDE software - well, I might think "that isn't KDE's, that's mine!" be mightily annoyed and resolve never to use the KDE Platform again if this mysterious KDE is going to claim my apps for themselves.

So I think we need and option that says "I used KDE technology to make this application" in addition to "KDE (by which I mean me) made this app". Of course, we should always hope to convert people using the first label to people who want to use the second label by making them feel a part of KDE.

I really like "Powered by KDE", and my interpretation when I read it is "Powered by KDE technology", so I think it would be OK to use this definition both for developers who are part of the KDE community and for "independent" developers.